Stories of the financial crisis

Other than the very first sentence, I found this a very good piece all round. We know that lots of people are struggling, and that times are hard - I've had to move continents to find work, I know I'm not the only one who's had to go that far, and I also know I'm lucky to have work - but putting individual, hard-working faces with their owns stories really brings it home.I disagree that austerity has brought us to this point - massive over-spending and recklessness did that - and if we spent now it would only lead to harsher times down the road.It is a shame, though, that the article had to start with a comment about Poland's new found work ethic, when Eastern Europe has been a region that has toiled, much of the time at gunpoint, for centuries.

Then the financial crisis hit, and despite gaining more experience and an MA, I've remained stuck at the bottom of the career ladder;I had quite an illuminating conversation on this subject recently with a female relative recently who did her arts education to MA about 35 years ago (in the UK).She basically said she this expectation of good jobs a-plenty for arts graduates is fairly new. "It was never expected that most arts graduates would get good pay" or similar. The exception for the working class was a vocation like teaching. As a child of the 80s-90s boom (and in tech / finance), I'd never seen it that way.My mum's entry job after her MA was childcare (she ended up running the place). Very interestingly, more than one of the female CEO's that I work with now had a very similar route. The one thing I had noticed is that absolutely all of them have only ever done public sector jobs.The fiscal policies of the last 30 years broadened opportunities for many but now the bills are being paid. Horrendous for many young people of course.

I am NOT an Englander (thanks god!) and I did read the other stories as well. The truth is that the British story sounds the most cruel while the French story is by far the least of an issue.But I find that in the British case its the result of a corrupt system, a Thatcher-approach in a capitalistic way, so not sure how representative for the rest of Europe is.The French on the other side I find them very representative for the Western Europe, who always complain about the Eastern and Souther Europe but they still live very good. With social benefits, like huurtoeslag, zorgtoeslag (rent and health benefits), unemployment benefits, child benefits, education benefits... In addition they work the least in Europe overall and everything is connected to relaxation.The Polish case I find very representative for Eastern Europe where people actual fight for survival. While the Spanish and the Italian case I think it can apply to me, as I am an intern architect, in my last year of my masters and still not sure what will happen in the future. (though i live by myself its true).

jglitter says:

I graduated in 2007, and for a year, I got offered every job I applied for. Then the financial crisis hit, and despite gaining more experience and an MA, I've remained stuck at the bottom of the career ladder; it just doesn't seem possible to advance, because so many vastly over-qualified people are applying for any job they can get. I've applied for dozens of jobs, which I was frequently over-qualified for, got interviews, and the answer was always the same: "sorry, you were great and we wish we could employ you, but we had a high standard of applicants and there was someone who's been doing this exact job or better elsewhere for the past five years".I've been temping for the past year, and have only just now been lucky enough to get permanent part-time work with the company I was temping with. I'm getting by; I'm doing better than a lot of people I know; but this uncertain, worry-filled working life bears no resemblance to the career path I was promised if I worked hard and got some experience. It feels as though my life and progression has stalled, despite my best efforts; like a lot of people my age, I'll manage, but I feel stuck in a circular rotation of entry-level jobs when in a better economic climate I would be earning more in a more responsible position.It's infuriating, especially as I'm aware that I've been very fortunate; if I'd graduated a year later, I wouldn't have got the year's experience that I could cite in interviews for yet another entry-level job; on top of that, I have a degree, and have often taken work that doesn't require one. I hate to be the overqualified competitor for a job someone who left school with A-levels should be able to count on, but there's no other option but starve.

In Paris at the moment, you'll likely to hear very contrasting stories of peoples' personal situations, some better and some much worse than the Cergy case above. I've lived here for 6 years now, and though there have always been homeless people around, I've definitely noticed more and more kipping out on metro platforms and in shop doorways in the last few months. And when on the metro my carriage is now more often filled with people experiencing hardship getting on and giving a 'speech' to the rest of the passengers about their plight, looking for donations.On the flipside to this, the swanky department stores are full of people, the gig and concert venues I've been to are busy, and the restaurants have no shortage of punters. It's hard to know whether these types are genuinely experiencing good times, or have their fingers in their ears pretending it's all ok when it isn't, but are just carrying on as 'normal' to keep up with everyone else. Whichever one it is, there's an increasing feeling of division between those in difficulty and those who are (on the surface at least) not

I can identify with a lot of the stories on here but luckily i've ended up in a never ending status quo rather than a spiral towards debt, and it's a sign of the times that I consider this a lucky situation to be in.Several years ago I was embarking on a promising BBC career, many temporary month contracts with decent pay and chance of progress, all while living at home. Unfortunately just as the financial crisis hit my mother became ill and with my father having died several years prior, I was now the only breadwinner in the family supporting myself and my sister. I had to abandon my career in favour of a low paid highly skilled job at a local high school, where I remain to this day. The job paid enough to just about get by but left me in large amounts of debt, something I only recently paid off due to an inheritance from my late father paying out.I can only offer the following advice to Mr Boden, persevere even in the face of rejection. My mother, who had a severe mental breakdown, was consistently refused any form of benefit and my local GP was partially to blame for this, refusing to diagnose her correctly. In the end when we went to medical health specialists they told me if she had been denied treatment anymore, she would not have been able to recover mentally, possibly full time care for the rest of her life. As it is she was treated, exceptionally well, and recovered sufficently to work. At the time she was refused ESA, then awarded ESA, then they demanded its return for reasons we could not fathom. We eventually gave up with them and luckily she was okay to work. At an ESA tribunal they requested a mentally ill woman present her case, and didnt tell her she needed a medical expert on hand with her. 2nd time she went to the tribunal, they told her that her case worker was not sufficient, despite being a medical professional, and she needed her actual psychiatric doctor on hand, who was not available for several months, hence why we gave up. She now claims for disability living allowance and was awarded a high component and a low component because of her learning difficulties, she has a particularly low IQ. It all depends on the person handling your case, a disgraceful set of affairs but nothing you can do about it other than persist and lobby.Mr Boden you need to first of all find a GP who is sympathetic to your situation, who can come up with a fully detailed report about you and your injuries, and who is willing to support your application for ESA and DLA. Our family doctor for years was replaced by two new GP's, one a reckless idiot who refused to do anything, the 2nd was a Polish lady who did absolutely everything possible to help despite being new to the area. Find a good doctor, get your case together with them and fight for what is rightfully yours.My current situation is that I am still looking to finally leave my mother's house (i'm 28) and my current job, which pays less than Aldi, but until the latter happens I cannot afford to do the former, and therefore I, like many others find themselves in a state of purgatory. I am eternally grateful for the fact I have a roof over my head though, unlike many others in less fortunate circumstances.

Emergency Food Aid

Strangely, Australia also has 10% of its population living with food insecurity, and it is a country that is not suffering from a recession or large unemployment rates. It is also a primary food producer. One of the greatest contributiorsd to food insecurity is the price of shelter and utilities. Housing a family and paying ofr electriicty and water costs so much that parents keep children home from school if they do not have enough to send them with lunch or eat less themselves. So, I would say that real estate markets and the privatisation of utilities has much more to do with this problem than a recession.

The UK has become a very depressing place to live. Benefit cuts, price increases on even the basic foodstuffs and no jobs. What a mess.We are on a downward spiral that is on a scale never seen before and our politicians pretend its for our own good. What a joke. The rich are laughing all the way to the bank and the rest of us are heading for destitution. If ever there was a need for a sea change in political life it is now, before its too late. We need either a revolution or a political party that represents the needs of the majority of people in the UK. A party that will galvanise the high level of anger and discontent that currently pervades the UK and channel it into constructive change to the socio/economic system. Change that will bring us jobs, affordable housing, a sound welfare state and a life of dignity not foodbanks.

I'm all for bashing the Tory government, calling for reforms and fairness like any other good minded person. But very depressing? a mess? no. Go and live in Greece to understand what a 'very depressing' place is like to live in. This is before I tell you to live in the Caribbean, Africa, China or India. All with hundreds of millions of people in living in extreme poverty and or repression. Regardless of everything that is happening in the UK, compared to many places on earth we live in paradise.Does this mean the Tory cuts are good and should not be challenged with every bone in our body? of course not. But we should at least do so with a global perspective.

The last time I signed on ( about 6 years ago now ) it took approximately 6 weeks for me to get any money at all, I didnt have savings, redundancy etc. I would imagine a large number of those using the service are people who have been laid off and have yet to recieve benefits.I doubt the recent cuts to benefit staff have sped up the process in the last few years.

Why has noone mentioned the elephant in the room? The reason people cannot afford the small amount it takes to feed themselves is because of the HUGE cost of housing. House prices almost doubled under the last labour government thanks to cheap credit and 100%+ mortgages. It costs a few pounds for a meal, but it can cost almost 100% of take home pay to pay the rent or a mortgage. My generation is a lost generation thanks to new labour.

Crying babies

This doesn't really explain why they are hard to ignore, only their effect upon the human brain. I have read that the reason why they are hard to ignore is because they notes of their cry are chaotic and hence are hard to ignore for the human brain that more than anything wants to recognise patterns, similarly nails being dragged down a chalkboard.

I recall when my wife was in the ward overnight, having given birth. The lady in the next bed left her baby to cry in the night, even putting earplugs in so she wouldn't hear it while she slept (unlike the other ladies in the ward who had to listen to her baby cry). Interestingly, she wasn't doing this out of selfishness, but according to some parenting school of thought from a book she was into.

There's a theory that the reason babies often sleep well during the day is that in evolutionary terms their parents have to hunt/gather so are too busy to attend to babies, but that babies don't sleep as well at ngiht because their parents are present to give them the attention they need, and that as part of this need for attention they're loud so their parents have to comfort them to keep them safe and not attract danger. Dunno where I read that. May just have been random speculation on a chat forum rather than anything as formal as a theory.

Just a personal impression - I seem to find other people's screaming babies much less annoying now that I have children (no longer babies, but they did scream at the time) of my own.Have I become more consciously tolerant - my primary sympathies lie now with the baby's parents, whose predicament I appreciate as being worse than my own as relatively disinterested audience - or has my subconsious reactive mechanism been altered by my experience as a parent?

I am childless and find the screaming baby noise almost unbearable. I have no instinctive desire to help it - I have a desire to either get as far away as possible or, if severly hungover, throw it in a woodchipper.I expect this comment to be deleted forthwith.

I am a father of a nine month old baby girl, to be honest i have not read the article but, all i can write is the reason why i or my wife gets up is because we bloody well have to or else she will continue to cry. Being a new father I tried my own experiment, my hypothesis was if i let my daughter cry eventually she will stop crying, there was one big confounding variable, my daughter. After that disastrous experiment i swear I could hear the ringing in my ears even when I was in the office.

I don't know where the get the idea the crying infants are impossible to ignore, I've been in cafe's, pubs and on busses where chattering women have managed it quite successfully, much to the annoyance of everybody else.When I hear crying kids, or see their older brothers and sisters behaving like little monsters in public places, I don't want to slap the kids, I feel like slapping the parents. If you had to sit an exam before having children, the world would be a lot less populated, and a lot more peaceful.

Outside Basingstoke the electricity was off for a week. The jukebox and the fruit machines were silent in the candle-lit pub, and anyone who wanted beer had to drink bitter because the lager relied on electric pumps. Blissful, in its way.

A Turkish lorry driver who'd slept in his cab outside our warehouse bounded in the next morning none the worse for wear. Maybe those winds are normal on the Anatolian plateau.

I forgive Fish. I didn't see his forecast, just the 5-day forecast the BBC showed on the Sunday before, and that showed a hurricane all right.

I can remember the tremendous roaring of the wind, me, Mum, Dad and my sister huddled on the living room floor, flickering candles, what sounded like canon going off in the garden (it was the tops of oak trees in the adjacent forest being twisted off), a brief lull at ~1am followed by an immense jarring gust that shook the walls (4ft thick mind you) and tore half the roof off.

I can also remember the morning - it took 1 hr to travel 500m down the road as there was a tree every 20-50ft. I can also remember a deep sense of disorientation and dislocation and feeling sad about the trees.

I was living one block back from the sea in Brighton. As I recall, in the days and nights in the run-up had been windy enough, but the sound of breaking glass was new. You try to rationalise: I told myself it was milk bottles (then still common), but it was windows being blown in. This happened to a neighbour, who was outside, in what I now realise was probably a state of shock.

Even so, I tried to get to work in Shoreham - mad! The two-storey up-and-over garage door at the back of the Metropole Hotel had blown off and bits of it were scything around in the wind, which had barely dropped at this point - this have been not long after seven in the morning. My lift didn't turn up so I cadged a ride from one of the few passing cars on the main seafront road. Oh, the strength of the work ethic! We swerved around bits of beach hut, blown all the way across Hove lawns, and saw a car with its side door ripped off by the wind.

Edwards High Vacuum sent us all home in the afternoon anyway. With friends, I surveyed the devastation in the Old Steine and drank beer in the Hungry Years - one of the few bars able to open on what must have been one of the quietest Friday nights in the history of Brighton.

My brother slept through it. Got up following morning. Walked to work. Waited for someone to unlock. Gave up. Walked home. Started to notice how deserted and wrecked everywhere was. Bless him.

My mother woke up and went back to sleep. She'd lived through the blitz and her father was a fireman so I guess she'd had worse things to worry about in her life.

Me, I went and sat with the cats who had chosen the strongest part of the house to cower. We lost a garden wall and had several lightning strikes in the back garden and I remember, before I headed for safety, looking across at an electricity sub-station that was going off like a firework display. Worst storm I've sat through. The real shock afterwards was travelling to favourite haunts in Sussex and seeing so many trees down. Thousands upon thousands of them. Changed the landscape forever.

In general, we don't get extreme weather in the UK. I imagine that's why some commentators here are being so sniffy about a bit of wind. However, it was a significant windstorm, and not just because the forecasters got it wrong. Even if they'd got it right, the losses would have been significant.

I remember the day - I was a 4th year senior, doing a work placement at a GP's surgery in West London. There was so much damage everywhere and people were scared to be out. THe roads were empty, except for debris and stationary cars. I remember a news report from the day that 3 or 4 of the oaks in Sevenoaks had been blown over. These things don't happen in isolation - they damage stuff, they hurt people.